The Marvelettes

Martha and the Vandellas

Lesley Gore

important work in color

The Marvelettes: 1961: Please Mr. Postman. 1962: The Marvelettes Sing * Playboy. 1963: Marvelous * Live. 1966: Greatest Hits. 1967: The Marvelettes. 1968: Sophisticated. 1969: Full Bloom. 1970: Return of the Marvelettes. 1975: Anthology. 1993: Deliver: The Singles (1961-1993).

Martha and the Vandellas: 1963: Come and Get Your Memories * Heatwave. 1965: Dance Party. 1966: Watch Out * Greatest Hits. 1967: Live. 1968: Ridin’ High. 1969: Sugar and Spice. 1970: Natural Resources. 1972: Black Magic * Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. 1974: Anthology. 1993: Live! Wire: The Singles (1962-1972). 1995: Milestones.

Lesley Gore: 1963: Lesley Gore. 1964: Mixed-up Hearts * Boys, Boys, Boys * Girl Talk. 1965: My Town, My Guy & Me * The Golden Hits of Lesley Gore. 1966: All about Love. 1967: California Nights. 1972: Something New Now. 1976: Love Me By Name. 1982: The Canvas Can Do Miracles. 1986: Anthology. 1996: It’s My Party: Mercury Anthology.

Greil Marcus, who even to this day is intrigued by female artists, suggested that the original girl group sound – the Chiffons, the Ronettes, the Shangri-las, etc. –constituted "the warmest and most affecting" genre of rock and roll. I’m not sure what he meant, unless he was talking about the plush sympathy he felt while listening to these girls sing about boy problems. The girl bands were made up of male musicians: men usually wrote the songs; men produced and arranged the records. In the sixties, the most important gender trend was the explosion of female songwriters and performer just past the middle of the decade that would include some of the most important artists of the decade. Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin (after leaving Columbia), Sandy Denny and Joni Mitchell are examples: "warm and affecting" wasn’t in their approach.

Preceding this was pop music in a less personalized format. Phil Spector’s magnificent productions for the Ronette’s, the Crystals, Darlene Love and the Righteous Brothers are expressive of the auteurist principal as applied to the pop format. So is the work of Smokey Robinson, Willaim Stevenson and Holland-Dozier-Holland for the Marvelettes and the Vandellas.

The early Marvelettes featured backup singing in giddy falsetto unison, and the Motown production unit hadn’t quite attained élan. The records were generally pretty weak. The Beatles’ rapturous desperation on their white Englishmen version of "Please Mr. Postman," is superior to the Marvelettes’ version which starts well but grows H-D-H tedious. The Marvelettes' Anthology is saved from banality mostly by the contributions of Smokey Robinson and William Stevenson. The Marvelettes’ were windows onto Robinson’s and Stevenson’s souls on their handful of classics - "I’ll Keep Holding On," "Don’t Mess With Bill," "Marionette" and "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game."

Martha and the Vandellas’ Anthology is tough. Martha Reeves was a better singer that the Marvelettes’ Gladys Horton and Wanda Young; she sang with an edifying passion; her voice bangs along; it lurches and gnashes; her personality shines through these songs in a brassy, impetuous way. But the best musical moments for the Vandellas’ remain those of Holland, Dozier and Holland: "Come and Get These Memories," "Heat Wave," "Nowhere to Run," "Love Makes Me Do Foolish Things" and "Jimmy Mack." An exception is "Dancing in the Streets," written by William Stevenson and Marvin Gaye, which was as close as Motown came to approaching Phil Spector’s production inspiration. The clarity of "Dancing in the Streets" and its musical/thematic conceptuality were unusual: Motown’s best moments are usually musical abstractions. The hint at pageantry (the horns), the elevated rallying cry, the way the rhythm track floats along in the boastful, perfectly assured manner – this was Motown’s "River Deep, Mountain High," its "Strawberry Fields Forever." The Vandella’ Anthology is strong, but runs the predictable Motown path of dropping in intensity as the years go by. The 18-track Milestones is better than the box set, Live Wire, because expansiveness always exposes Motown’s hollow core. The Vandellas’ Dance Party is a rare example of a consistent Motown album.

Lesley Gore recorded only one album for Motown; nobody I know has heard it. But the Motown-Gore connection allows a comparison of Motown's style with what was considered more mainstream pop values. The Marvelettes, the Vandellas, and Lesley Gore all had that queerly identical number of hits, give or take a few. Although Lesley Gore wrote a few of her tunes, they were marginal contributions to the advent of female songwriting, and inferior to those of the writer’s who supplied her with other songs – Ellie Greenwich/Barry Mann, Paul Anka, Marvin Hamlisch, Mark Barken and Ben Raleigh. Her early "feminist" anthem, "You Don’t Own Me," was written by Zjohn Madara and Dave White. Quincy Jones produced Lesley Gore’s first several albums. He double-tracked her vocals and gave her a girl-group sound. His arrangements were tasteful, but contained more old-style, big-band splashiness than did Motown’s arrangements. Unlike Motown, Gore’s back-up singers weren’t inspired by church music: they were smiling pop choruses, less soulful, less communal, and less rhythmical, than Motown’s. This made them more intrusive, obnoxious. But, in retrospect, there wasn’t much difference in pop temperament, and little difference in content, between the Motown girl groups and Lesley Gore’s records in this period before pop music became a self-conscious artist’s medium. Though the Marvelettes’ and the Vandellas few peaks may have been a bit higher, Lesley Gore’s album career seems more consistent. Gore had an edge perhaps because she could look beyond her record company’s publishing arm for help in locating songs. There are touches of r&b, but mostly it’s white, teenage pop – a step away (an important step away) from teen idol crap. With no help from Smokey, H-D-H, Gaye or Stevenson, and without the vocal equipment of Reeves, Gore’s own corporate interests provided her with teenage psychodramas, love rhapsodies and a touch of independence. Motown’s sexuality was more overt; Lesley’s role as a pre-teen growing to sexual maturity was mind-over-body emotionalism; its pre-coital nature, like that of most girl-group music at this stage, was suspect, even artificial, but, considering youngsters and their corporations don’t write or sing like this anymore, it sounds unique now. Lesley had a naïve way of hitting certain extended notes without softening them with vibrato, and the compassion-inducing sweep that resulted was irresistibly forlorn. It was a whine that worked. The Lesley Gore Anthology and It’s My Party are surprisingly artful depictions of adolescent yearning.

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